Lisa, thank you. I am getting the sense from the available information about this grant that the Knight Foundation is well intentioned. My concerns here, and I think that the concerns from other community members, are primarily related to WMF's handling of this situation. I for one would be happy to see improvements to internal search on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons that would benefit our readers as well as our community members.
On WMF's side, since WMF is exploring the question "Would users go to Wikipedia if it were an open channel beyond an encyclopedia?" (quote from page 2 of the grant document), it seems to me that potential re-scoping of Wikipedia would merit a conversation with the community. Looking at page 10 of the grant, the scope of the Knowledge Engine project appears to be aligned with Wikimedia values, but it looks to me like the scope and methods of implementing the Knowledge Project should have been discussed with the community. Dariuz, regarding your statement that > after some consultation internally, my understanding is that in practice it will often > not be sensible to insist on publishing grant applications, basically because many > donors are just not as progressive as we would like them to be, and we do not > want to decrease our chances for a grant in the future (donors may not be > comfortable releasing this, and in the same time they will not want to be singled > out in public as the only ones who refused). I would respond by saying that openness is a value in the Wikimedia movement and that our values should not be for sale at any price. Policy and practice should be that documents for all restricted grants received by WMF will be published on Commons and that the community will be notified of all restricted grants that are being contemplated by WMF. If a potential donor is uncomfortable with that, then they can donate unrestricted funds anonymously, and those funds must be spent only on programs that are explicitly authorized under WMF's published annual plans or sent to the reserve or the endowment. Again I will say that I hope that our value of openness is not for sale at any price. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
